Baku / 08.11.17 / Turan: The latest innovations in the Azerbaijani legislation on providing protection in the courts will cause problems for both citizens and lawyers, said the well-known Azerbaijani lawyer Khalid Bagirov in interview with the Cətin Sual program (Difficult issue) of Turan agency.

On 31 October at the initiative of the Supreme Court, the Milli Mejlis amended the law on the legal profession, the civil procedure and administrative procedural codes. The day before, the head of state approved these changes, which limited the institution of representation. From now on, individuals in the courts for civil and administrative cases can only be represented by professional lawyers - members of the Bar Association. There can not be other representatives, except for close relatives. Legal persons in civil and administrative matters can be represented by their staff members. The innovations come into force on January 1, 2018.

Bagirov drew attention to the fact that the Supreme Court motivated the innovations with good goals-an increase in the quality of legal protection. However, the reform is not carried out in a complex but fragmentary way, and this not only does not solve the problem, but will generate new ones.

The fact is that the number of lawyers in the country is less than 1000 people, and the legal services market employs by ten times as many lawyers.

Until now, in the face of a shortage of lawyers in civil and administrative matters, the main burden fell on representatives who are not lawyers. This institution has been completely eliminated. Now, fewer than 1,000 attorneys will deal with litigation, the number of which reaches 350 thousand a year. This is very small. First, it will lead to a rise in price of lawyer services. Secondly, there will be problems in access of citizens to legal aid. Thirdly, the corrupt factor will increase. How should reforms be carried out? According to Bagirov, first of all it was necessary to develop the institution of the Bar, and only after this, think about the liquidation of the institution of the Bar.

A group of practicing lawyers appointed a protest rally on November 18. Is it possible to influence the decisions of regulatory bodies of protest actions? Answering this question Bagirov said: "When we appointed the action the president has not yet signed this law. We hoped that by this action we will be able to convey our position to higher levels more widely. Unfortunately, the president signed the law. Today we will once again discuss the urgency of the action and perhaps we will insist on carrying out the action," Bagirov said. He retains the hope that the issue will be reviewed and the reform will be carried out in a different way. Bagirov believes that the issue must necessarily be revised, since otherwise about 1000 lawyers of the country will have to go out on 350-400 thousand cases a year.

"It's not real. Even if a thousand more lawyers are admitted to the college, defenders will still be missed," he said. Azerbaijan needs 10,000 lawyers. For Georgia, whose population is twice less than Azerbaijan, there are 5,000 lawyers. What is the way out of the situation? Answering this question, Bagirov said that the law should be suspended urgently. There were precedents in Azerbaijan when the parliament abolished regressive legislative acts some time later. The president has such powers.-03C06--